Sun Protection News: Traditional Sunscreens May Not Be Enough

It's winter in Sydney, but the foamy breaks at Bondi Beach—a small yet legendary crescent of sand minutes from the city's urban bustle—are studded with surfers. Sleek and shiny in uniform black wet suits, they paddle out, pivot, and ride back to shore, on repeat: a smooth, mesmerizing loop. The Australian sunlight is brilliant, strong enough to necessitate sunglasses indoors. Yet somehow, the most famous Australian beauties—Nicole, Cate, Naomi—stay resolutely untouched by the sun.

"I don't have a single friend who goes to the beach to tan. Not one," declares Jo Horgan, the owner of Mecca Cosmetica, a string of culty beauty boutiques in Australia and New Zealand. Horgan has a zero-tolerance sunburn policy for her employees. If you're pink and peeling, don't even bother showing up—it sends the wrong message to her sun-smart clientele.

Horgan's attitude embodies a seismic cultural shift in the way in which Australians think about the sun. Prompted by startling statistics (for instance: Two out of three Aussies will be diagnosed with skin cancer before age 70), the country's government has attacked the issue of sun safety aggressively, with an approach that ranges from cutesy—the '80s slogan "Slip! Slop! Slap!" (slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen, slap on a hat) was set to a catchy tune any schoolchild could trill—to the stomach-churning: In a TV spot from 2008, a pretty 26-year-old tearfully expresses her desire to live. Moments later, we learn she has already died of melanoma, and a tagline rolls: "No tan is worth dying for." The same year, Cancer Council Australia announced that teen tanning had declined by 45 percent over three years.

Think such extreme measures are uncalled for in the United States? More than a million new cases of skin cancer are diagnosed in this country every year—higher than breast, prostate, lung, and colon cancers combined. And up to 90 percent of the visible signs of aging—that's 90 percent of all spots, wrinkles, sagging—are caused by the sun. Yet 60 percent of Americans report that they rarely or never apply sunscreen, and only 27 percent apply the one-ounce, full-body dose necessary for the level of SPF offered on the bottle.

Now comes news that the sunscreens we are using may not be doing enough. Previously, skin-care scientists focused exclusively on ultraviolet rays (UVA and UVB), devising chemical blockers such as avobenzone, octocrylene, and ecamsule to absorb them and physical blockers (zinc oxide, titanium dioxide) to deflect and scatter them. ("Broad spectrum" indicates that a sunscreen contains a mixture of both.) But a German study published last year suggested that the spectrum of sun damage is wider than previously suspected: Infrared radiation may also release free radicals and accelerates aging. While UV rays account for only 6.8 percent of solar light, infrared, which we mainly experience as the heat of the sun, makes up 54.3 percent (the rest, called "visible light," is what we see as the colors of the rainbow). How much skin damage infrared does remains to be seen—some estimates indicate that the combination of infrared and visible causes some 10 to 20 percent of sun damage—but, according to Michael Southall, PhD, a senior researcher at Johnson & Johnson, "traditional sunscreens, which only block UV, don't protect us from the sun's total oxidative toll."

Our best defense may be the same family of ingredients that likely already fortify your day cream but that are relatively new to mass-market sunscreens: antioxidants. When skin absorbs solar energy (whether UV or infrared), renegade photons cause a burst of free radicals—short-lived atoms or molecules that have lost an electron, making them unstable and bound to damage any proteins or genes that get in their way. Antioxidants—including vitamins A, C, and E, green tea, and pomegranate—have the unique ability to donate an electron to a free radical, stabilizing it without destabilizing themselves.

Neutrogena recently boosted its high-octane sunscreen with the antioxidants feverfew, soy, and vitamin E; they say the new blend reduces 70 percent of oxidative damage. A study funded by Coppertone illustrates just how much such an addition could help: The brand's basic SPF 30 sunscreen reduced free-radical formation by only 39 percent, but when an antioxidant cocktail was added, free-radical production decreased by 73 percent—almost double the protection of sunscreen alone.

For those who wish to protect from the inside out, antioxidant-packed beauty pills appear to provide some level of sunscreen backup. Perhaps the most well-studied version is Murad's pomegranate-based Pomphenol Sunguard supplements; test subjects who popped one tablet per day for seven days and wore SPF 8 experienced 22.7 percent less burning or redness than those who only wore sunscreen.

Still, the smartest sun-safety plan is one that's truly broad-spectrum: a multiprong defense involving certified, SPF-treated clothing (news flash: Your basic T-shirt provides the SPF equivalent of only about 6.5); UV-coated sunglasses (which can block between 95 and 99 percent of rays); and an antioxidant-rich sunscreen, applied liberally to all the vulnerable spots derms know to check for skin cancer: ears, scalp, and the backs of knees. Think of it this way: It costs $400 and up to laser off one unwelcome freckle; a $12 bottle of SPF and a $50 surfer's rash guard—all the rage on Bondi—could save you the trouble in the first place.

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